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I remember talking to some very unhappy legal secretaries way back then when they were forced to switch from WordPerfect to Word. They used WordPerfect day in a

by pivo 10y ago

I remember talking to some very unhappy legal secretaries way back then when they were forced to switch from WordPerfect to Word. They used WordPerfect day in and day out and were very efficient at it's keystroke commands and loved it because it was fast. With its focus on the mouse and GUI slowness, Word was a very painful transition and productivity drain for them.

ethbro 10y ago
Mouse is always easier for new users to learn. Keyboard is always faster for trained users and anywhere with tight processing performance metrics you'll see almost exclusively-keyboard users. Ironically, a lot of users still prefer mainframe applications over newer GUIs for the same reason. Source: I've worked for quite a few "on the floor" user processing centers for various types of data. 30s-2min per work item type of stuff.
smacktoward 10y ago
But at least part of that resistance was the tech version of Stockholm Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome). They didn't love WordPerfect because it was better than Word, they loved WordPerfect because it was what they already knew and they had invested a lot of time in learning its idiosyncrasies. Moving to Word meant throwing all that learning out and having to start learning all over again, which they (quite naturally) didn't want to do. But none of that means that WordPerfect was a superior product; it really wasn't, especially for new users. It just means that people who were heavily invested in WordPerfect -- and there were a lot of those people back then -- didn't want that investment to have been for nothing. Microsoft addressed this issue quite effectively by providing a mode in early versions of Word that supported all of WordPerfect's key bindings. This let those hard-core WordPerfect users ease into the new application without having to learn a whole new way of working. Over time they discovered how much easier it was to use the mouse and WIMP interface, so the WordPerfect compatibility mode became less and less of a selling point. But at the beginning it was absolutely crucial to selling Word into organizations that had been bastions of WordPerfect use.
- scholia 10y ago
  Correct. The sufferings of the ones who'd learned IBM Displaywrite were even worse....

by pivo 10y ago

ethbro 10y ago

Mouse is always easier for new users to learn. Keyboard is always faster for trained users and anywhere with tight processing performance metrics you'll see almost exclusively-keyboard users. Ironically, a lot of users still prefer mainframe applications over newer GUIs for the same reason. Source: I've worked for quite a few "on the floor" user processing centers for various types of data. 30s-2min per work item type of stuff.

smacktoward 10y ago

But at least part of that resistance was the tech version of Stockholm Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome). They didn't love WordPerfect because it was better than Word, they loved WordPerfect because it was what they already knew and they had invested a lot of time in learning its idiosyncrasies. Moving to Word meant throwing all that learning out and having to start learning all over again, which they (quite naturally) didn't want to do. But none of that means that WordPerfect was a superior product; it really wasn't, especially for new users. It just means that people who were heavily invested in WordPerfect -- and there were a lot of those people back then -- didn't want that investment to have been for nothing. Microsoft addressed this issue quite effectively by providing a mode in early versions of Word that supported all of WordPerfect's key bindings. This let those hard-core WordPerfect users ease into the new application without having to learn a whole new way of working. Over time they discovered how much easier it was to use the mouse and WIMP interface, so the WordPerfect compatibility mode became less and less of a selling point. But at the beginning it was absolutely crucial to selling Word into organizations that had been bastions of WordPerfect use.

scholia 10y ago
Correct. The sufferings of the ones who'd learned IBM Displaywrite were even worse....